Cancelable PalmCode generated from randomized Gabor Filters for palmprint protection

The security and protection of biometric template has been the bottleneck of its applications due to permanent appearance of biometrics. We propose “Cancelable PalmCode” based on coding approaches to protect texture features of palmprints. Cancelable PalmCode templates are generated from Gabor filters whose parameters are randomized by the user-specific tokenised pseudo-random number (PRN). The effects of seven randomization schemes are studied and compared. Three of the randomization schemes are proved feasible and practicable for cancelable PalmCode. Cancelable PalmCode is able to be revoked and reissued conveniently and the transform is non-invertible. The selected three schemes avoid performance degradation caused by PRN. The experimental results on PolyU palmprint database show the feasibility and efficiency of cancelable PalmCode and it can be easily generalized to other palmprint codes for biometric security and protection.